The Cookout experiments with comics, documentary, and social media to repair media and technology.
2ND MADE PROJECT:
THE COOKOUT
The Invite is a decentralized social media platform and documentary film podcast.
It uses the cookout framework to cultivate solidarity and empower historically disempowered artists and communities.
THE FILM
THE PLATFORM
The Invite is a platform and podcast for storytellers and community organizers seeking a seat at the cookout table.
The first phase of research was surveying and interviewing artists and scholars on how they are navigating social media, to test demand for an alternative platform. That research was conducted at Harvard and culminated in a convening, video podcast interview series, and report you can read and watch here. At Harvard, I met Rudy Fraser, founder of Blacksky Algorithms, who was launching a project to build decentralized communities on the ATProtocol.
The beta version of The Invite app will launch on Bluesky’s decentralized ATProtocol in summer 2026 coinciding with the release of the first installment of The Invite. Decentralized technology allows communities to control data, moderation, governance, and algorithms where one username and login offers access to an ecosystem of apps for micro-blogging, photo, video, long-form blogging, livestreaming, and more.
The goal of the ambitious Invite project is develop platforms for solidarity over division, cultivating community-based strategies for artists, community organizers, and scholars to work together to develop our own AI through ancestral intelligence. I hypothesize ancestral intelligences can guide this development process. As my comic and academic book demonstrate, the cookout, as an ancestral Black American practice, is a productive framework for guiding how to invite (develop), cook (produce), serve (distribute), and host (exhibit) our stories and data.
Anchoring the platform with be an annual documentary film and regular series of podcasts highlighting the storytellers and groups that are accepting The Invite.
Each premiere installment of The Invite documentary will center on a theme, with the first, “FREEDOM,” premiering Juneteenth 2026 starring Shea Couleé, Jamila Woods, Lisa Beasley, Nicole Rawls, Morgan Johnson, Jenn Freeman (Po Chop) and Jade T. Perry.
Throughout the year, different groups will be showcased on The Invite podcast series with interviews and showcases of films and campaigns from storytellers and community organizations.
THE PODCAST
Across the invite-only and open platforms, we regularly host conversations with community leaders to share recipes for solidarity and liberation.
Through monthly new moon livestreams and kitchen table conversations, we highlight the people and strategies for freeing us from harmful systems in media, tech, and society.
THEORY & PRACTICE
The Cookout: A Guide to AI(Ancestral Intelligence) is a comic workbook for storytellers, community organizers, researchers, and other leaders based on Reparative Media (MIT Press, 2025).
The Invite platform, podcast, and process is based on the cookout framework.
The comic narrative is an Afrofuturist tale set in a corporate dystopia that helps readers understand how media and technology can harm, and the workbook offers prompts for them to write in and brainstorm how to work collectively towards repair.
Published: April 2025.
For more on the concept of ancestral intelligence, you can read the essay, “Ancestral Intelligence: The AI We Need,” in Commonplace.
THEORY IN PRACTICE:
COMMUNITY COLLABORATIONS
Using the cookout framework, MADE Lab consulted The Chicago Media Coalition—four BIPOC media organizations in Chicago—on developing a strategy for collaboration and collective wealth.
Below is an example of the emerging model. Click here to read the report.
RESEARCH
WRITING & TALKS
The MIT Press. December 2025.
Using the framework of The Cookout, Reparative Media: Cultivating Stories and Platforms to Heal Our Culture shows how repairing our culture means healing how we make media, how we connect through technology, and how we generate knowledge.
At the Color Congress convening, I presented the Cookout as a framework for cultivating healing media ecosystems.
At the Ethical Tech convening I hosted at Harvard Business School, I presented the cookout as a framework for organizing coalitions, collectives, and organizations cultivating solidarity.